Having lost the rational argument against a bunch of grifters, we may now be beyond the point of no return. The pendulum will ...

Since then they have become the most sociable and affectionate cats imaginable. Although retired from outdoor pursuits (Elvis tends to forget where he is), Ted adds his great intellect to mine when I ...

Less than a week after the death of my friend, the palaeontologist Hans-Dieter Sues, I learn today that another friend, the ...

Nowadays most people have the computing power in their pockets to summon, at will, the entirety of human knowledge, but, people being people, they use it to have arguments with complete strangers and ...

Less than a week after the death of my friend, the palaeontologist Hans-Dieter Sues, I learn today that another friend, the zoologist Alan Wilson, has also passed. Hans died at home — peacefully, but ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

The preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same I cannot point to a moment when I knew I was called to serve God like this. The image is more like a watercolour, built up in layers, or a ...

In 2025, as the century closed its first quarter (where has the time gone?) I read (and listened to) 70-ish books, though the precise number rather depends on how one counts things. Mick Herron’s nine ...

Today, one year has passed since I published an open letter, signed by almost 3,500 members of the scientific community, asking the Royal Society to deal meaningfully with breaches of its code of ...

Last month I attended the IAML UK & Ireland Annual Study Weekend (ASW). IAML is the International Association of Music Libraries, and this is an event run each year by the UK & Ireland branch. This ...

Just before Christmas I was asked to talk to our molecular biologists about multivariate analyses. I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon, when I saw that I had to talk to them on Friday. “Ah, ...